continuous improvement. continuous advantage.
1.03.14 (ABE)
cbnd
Are
we
agile
yet?
Tomek Włodarek

how long have you
done agile for?
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
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more than 5 years
more than 3 years
more than a year
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

“
Bastardo! You can’t do agile! Agile is not a verb or a
noun. Admit you’ve been doing waterfall all along!
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).
”

how long have you
been agile for?
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

more than 5 years
more than 3 years
more than a year
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

how do you know how agile
how do you know that?
are you?
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

agility
/əˈdʒɪl ɪ ti/
1. state or quality of being agile
An enterprise’s ability to take advantage of
opportunities, respond to challenges, and to do so
while controlling risk.
2. to be quick and nimble
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

Pursuing agility
companies usually
start by investing
in their IT
departments.
Scrum - valuebased discovery and
decision-making
framework - is
often selected for
complex product
development.

stam·pede
/stʌmˈpiːd/
1. Sudden frenzied rush of (panic–stricken) animals.
2. To flee in a headlong rush.
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

scrum·pede
/skrʌmˈpiːd/
1. Sudden frenzied rush of (panic–stricken) companies
to do Scrum because others are doing it.
2. To flee in a headlong rush back to prescriptive ways
of doing things because Scrum is hard work.
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

“
Organizations are adopting Agile through a combination of bottom-up
adoption and top-down change. But the reality of Agile adoption has
diverged from the original ideas described in the Agile Manifesto, with
many adoptions resembling what Forrester labels water-Scrum-fall. This
model is not necessarily bad, but if application development
professionals do not carefully consider and make the right decisions
about where the lines fall between water-Scrum and Scrum-fall, they
are unlikely to realize Agile’s benefits.
Water-Scrum-Fall Is The Reality Of Agile For Most Organizations Today, Forrester, 7/2011
”

however agility is
not confined to
the IT department.
Executives must
look at the entire
enterprise to
evaluate how
practices across
all domains
support or hamper
organizational
agility
.
this is a complex
problem.

prisoner of beliefs
“
I’m ok withupper management’s until we specify
By iterative-incremental decision Sprint
Reviews must not be and testthan 30 minutes.
everything up front longer it all at the end.
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).
”

“
We saw that everything was falling down
and we fixed it.
–Cecilia Gimenez
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19349921
”

Ecce Homo (XIX century), Borja, Spain
“
Ecce Mono (XXI century), Borja, Spain
Without knowledge, action is useless and
knowledge without action is futile.
–Abu Bakr
Advisor, friend and father-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (573–634)
”

“
I wish I could turn back clock.
–Cecilia Gimenez
(amateur art restorer)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/9765947/I-wish-I-could-turn-back-clock-saysmonkey-mural-artist.html
”

Scrum provides
continuous change
framework required
to Transform the
Enterprise.
scrum change
teams use an
ordered practice
backlog to
introduce change
to practices.
results are
evaluated and
agility is earned
through the
adaptation process.

Productivity domain
= how fast you produce
stuff and what the costs
are?
Time to get a small change to a
customer
delivery times distribution
Frequency of releases
# of production ready features
per sprint
acceleration index
focus factor (V/C)
Cost per PBI
cost per sprint
…
do teams know these
metrics? what’s
within their control
to optimize them?
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

quality domain
= how good your stuff is?
# of Defects per PBI
Ratio of development budget to
revenue
# of defects found to solved
Maintenance as % of product
development budget
Stabilization time per release
ratio of development to
stabilization time
technical debt
crappiness/toxicity/maintanability*
…
*http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-code-is-crap.html
do teams know these
metrics? what’s
within their control
to optimize them?
*http://erik.doernenburg.com/2008/11/how-toxic-is-your-code
*http://blogs.msdn.com/b/zainnab/archive/2011/05/26/code-metrics-maintainability-index.aspx
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

value domain
= how valuable your stuff is?
customer satisfaction
customer retention
revenue per story point (or per
sprint)
development budget to revenue
% of product used by <20% of users
% of product used <20% of time
feature usage/cost of development
# or % of functionalities
removed last release
# of users
% of users on current release
time to recoup 100k investment
…
do teams know these
metrics? what’s
within their control
to optimize them?
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

enterprise domain
= everything else that
matters
investment in agility per person
(hopefully it wasn’t spent just
to make things “feel better” or
“feel right”)
Employee satisfaction*
Employee retention/trunover
recruitment rate/selection ratio
revenue per employee
…
do teams know these
metrics? what’s
within their control
to optimize them?
*http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2012/3/26/technology/atlassian-happiness-meter
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

productivity
quality
are
we
agile
yet?
value
happiness
what
now!?
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

productivity
quality
are
we
agile
yet?
value
happiness
what
now!?
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

a blend of value
and performance
metrics – an
Agility Index –
indicates progress
towards competitive
advantage and
sustained business
success.

suddenly everyone else is making money.
complexity at its best. who would have guessed?
“
[…] hordes of people – 35,000 from August to December – coming to the
town just to see the painting […] the church began levying a 4 euro entrance
fee on visitors, earning 2,000 euros in the first four days.
[…] merchandise flying off the shelves […]
[...] budget airline Ryanair offering cheap deals to nearby Zaragoza airport
encouraging “pilgrims” to visit the work [...]
Lawyers acting for Mrs Gimenez now insist she should be entitled to a cut of
the profits, which she wants to go towards a charity of her choice.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/9555526/Elderly-woman-who-botched-religious-fresco-demands-royalties.html
http://news.yahoo.com/disfigured-spanish-fresco-hit-artist-town-151848237.html
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).
”

agility is a complex problem
§ complexity turns best practices to good practices,
to a bunch of practices, to a bunch of hunches
§ in complex world best practices get noticed only in
retrospection (→illusion of validity)
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).

scientific experimentation
“
Developing these experimentation systems is the
responsibility of senior management; they have to
be put in by the leadership.
–Scott D. Cook
Co–founder of Intuit. #297 on Forbes's The 400 Richest Americans
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20040401/25cook.html
© 2013 Tomasz Włodarek. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (by-nc-nd).
”

thank you!
Agility Path. http://www.scrum.org/agility-path
Software in 30 Days. Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, 2012
The Business Value of Agile Software Methods: Maximizing ROI with
Just-In-Time Processes and Documentation. D.Rico, H.Sayani, S.Sone, 2010
Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics: The challenge of
complexity to ways of thinking about organisations. Ralph. D. Stacey, 2011
Accelerate! How the most innovative companies capitalize on today's
rapid-fire strategic challenges and still make their numbers. John P. Kotter,
HBR 2012
Thinking, Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman, 2011
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Nassim N. Taleb,
2010
A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making. David J. Snowden and Mary E.
Boone, HBR 2007
tomek@scrumvival.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/wlodarek
http://www.scrum.org
http://www.scrumvival.com